I can't promise often or interesting updates, but I'll ramble about books for you.

gavriel savit

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It’s possible that I’m in a terrible cycle. I’ve read so many mediocre books that I need something amazing to shake me up, but all the books I try are still just so-so. Which makes me wonder that I might like that more if I were experiencing them at any point of than now.

Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit is fine. Solid, even. I might have given it four stars if I read it four books ago, but I didn’t. It wasn’t a revelation, although Savit does have a good grasp on the inner workings of seven year olds. I think he does justice to the confusion of that age, when adults are mostly taken at face value, and the affable acceptance and flexibility and adaptability of the very young. World War II in the very near background was treated with a light touch–light on the horror and Anna’s understanding of what’s going on in the world comes in waves. I didn’t hate this, but I just didn’t love it.

I also didn’t hate At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider but I definitely love myself enough to stop reading it. It wasn’t even the mediocre kind of enjoyable and I’m trying to be better about not slogging my way through texts that are just dull. Or maybe dull isn’t the right word for this, but it fits right now. At Home was just very white woman, very privileged, and boring. She sobs about leaving a small New Zealand town, for Pete’s sake. Come the fuck on. There’s just so little substance–no deep dives into where they’re going, the history, what they’re seeing or eating, just surface notes and relief that they found Italian food in Beijing. Even as Tsh and her family are traveling the world, going to these amazing places and hopefully experiencing amazing things, her experience feels so very myopic. There is very little looking around for the reader and I don’t have time for this.

Amberlough is my next book and I have really high hopes and expectations. Crossing my fingers that the next post here isn’t as unhappy!